Elmore Leonard - Gunsights

“I have to take my wife home,” Moon said. “Then, after that.”

“After that, what? I'm not gonna last any time in this place. You know it, too.”

“Don't get him mad at you,” Moon said. “Say please and thank you or else keep your mouth shut till I get back.”

“When-goddamn it.”

“You might see it coming,” Moon said, “but I doubt it.”

This jail was hard time with no relief. Chop rocks and clear ditches or sweat to death in that second-floor, tin-roof cell. (The Fourth of July they sat up there listening to fools shooting their guns off in the street, expecting any moment bullets to come flying in the barred windows.) Bren Early could think of reports he'd read describing Confederate prisons, like Belle Isle in the James River and Libby's warehouse in Richmond, where Union soldiers rotted away and died by the thousands. Compared to those places the Sweetmary lockup was a resort hotel. But Bren would put R.J. Bruckner up with any of the sadistic guards he'd read about, including the infamous Captain Wirz of Andersonville.

One day after work Bruckner marched Bren Early down to the basement of the jail and took him into a room that was like a root cellar. Bren hoped for a moment he would be alone with Bruckner, but two other deputies stood by with pick handles while Bruckner questioned him about the stage holdup.

“One of your accomplices, now deceased, was named Pierson. What are the names of the other two?”

They stood with the lantern hanging behind them by the locked door.

“I wasn't part of it, so I don't know,” Bren Early said.

Bruckner stepped forward and hooked a fist into Bren's stomach and Bren hit him hard in the face, jolting him; but that was his only punch before the two deputies stepped in, swinging their pick handles, and beat him to the dirt floor.

Bruckner said, “What's the names of your other two chums?”

Bren said, “I never saw 'em before.”

“Once more,” Bruckner said.

“I'll tell you one thing,” Bren said.

“What is that?”

“When I get out I'm gonna tear your nose off, you ugly shitface son of a bitch.”

As with J.A. McWilliams, killed in Florence a year before while calling Bren Early some other kind of son of a bitch, did he say it all or not? Bren did not quite finish before Bruckner hit him with his fists and the deputies waded in to beat him senseless with the pick handles. Dumb, wavy-haired know-it-all; they fixed him. And they'd see he never let up a minute out on the work detail…where Bren would look up at the high crests and at the brushy ravines and pray for Moon to appear as his redeemer.

“You might see it coming, but I doubt it,” Moon had said.

Moon brought six Mimbre Apaches with him: the one named Red and five other stalkers who had chased wild horses with him, had served on the Apache Police at San Carlos and had raised plenty of hell before that.

They scouted Bruckner's work detail for three days, studying the man's moves and habits. The man seemed reasonably alert, that was one consideration. The other: the ground was wide open on both sides of the drainage ditch where the twenty or more prisoners had been laboring these past few days. Clearing a ditch that went where? Moon wasn't sure, unless it diverted water from the mine shafts. A slit trench came down out of a wash from the bald crest of a ridge. There were patches of owl clover on the slope, brittlebush and stubby clumps of mesquite and greasewood, but no cover to speak of.

Moon and his Mimbres talked it over in their dry camp and decided there was only one way to do the job.

Seven A.M., the seventeenth morning of Bren Early's incarceration, found him trudging up the grade with his shovel, second man in the file of prisoners-herded by four mounted guards, Bruckner bringing up the rear-Bren's eyes open as usual to scan the bleak terrain, now reaching the section of ditch they would be working today, moving up alongside it until Bruckner would stick two fingers in his mouth and whistle them to stop, jump in and commence digging and clearing.

Bren didn't see Moon. He didn't see the Mimbre Apaches-not until he heard that sharp whistle, the signal, turned to the trench and saw movement, a bush it looked like, a bush and part of the ground coming up out of the ditch, Christ, with a face made of dirt in it, seeing for the first time something he had only heard about: what it was like to stand in open terrain and, Christ, there they were all around you right there as you stood where there wasn't a sign of anything living a moment before. The Mimbres came out of the drainage ditch with greasewood in their hair, naked bodies smeared with dirt, and took the four deputies off their horses and had them on the ground, pointing revolvers in their struck-dumb faces before they knew what had happened. There were yells from the prisoners dancing around. Some of them raised their shovels and picks to beat the life out of Bruckner and his guards. But Moon and his stubby shotgun-Moon coming out of the ditch a few yards up the grade-would have none of it. He was not here in behalf of their freedom or revenge. They yelled some more and began to plead-Take us with you; don't leave us here-then cursed in loud voices, with the guards lying face down in the sand, calling Moon obscene names. But Moon never said a word to them or to anyone. Bren Early wanted to go over to Bruckner, but when Moon motioned, he followed. They rode out of there on the deputies' horses and never looked back.

Bren Early went home with Moon, up past the whitewashed agency buildings, up into the rugged east face of the Rincons. He saw Moon's stone house with its low adobe wall rimming the front of the property and its sweeping view of the San Pedro Valley. He saw Moon's wife in her light blue dress and white apron-no longer the McKean girl-saw the two cane chairs on the front porch and smelled the beef roast cooking.

“Well, now you have it, what do you do?” Bren said.

Moon looked at his wife and shrugged, not sure how to answer. “I don't know,” he said, “get up in the morning and pull on my boots. How about you?”

“We'll see what happens,” Bren said.

He rode out of there in borrowed clothes on a borrowed horse, but with visions of returning in relative splendor. Rich. At rest with himself. And with a glint in his eye that would say to Moon, “You sure you got what you want?”

Sweetmary: January, 1890

They were having their meeting in the stove-heated company office halfway up the grade, a wind blowing winter through the mine works: Bren Early, bearded, in his buffalo coat; Mr. Vandozen, looking like a banker in his velvet-lapeled Chesterfield and pinch-nose glasses; a man named Ross Selkirk, the superintendent of the Sweetmary works, who clenched a pipe in his jaw; and another company man, a geologist, by the name of Franklin Hovey.

Mr. Vandozen stood at a high table holding his glasses to his face as he looked over Bren Early's registered claims and assay reports. He said once, “There seems to be a question whether you're a miner, Mr. Early, or a speculator.”

It wasn't the question he was waiting for, so Bren didn't answer.

Mr. Vandozen tried again. “Have you actually mined any ore?”

“Some.”

“This one, I'll bet,” Mr. Vandozen said, holding up an assay report. “Test would indicate quite a promising concentrate, as high as forty ounces to the ton.”

“Three thousand dollars an ore-wagon load,” Bren said.

And Mr. Vandozen said, “Before it's milled. On the deficit side you have labor, machinery, supplies, shipping, payments on your note-” The LaSalle Mining vice president, who had come all the way from New Mexico to meet Bren Early, looked over at him. “What do you have left?”